IBM's analytics software is helping Nevada's Clark County deliver social services to children while saving money for the state.
LAS
VEGAS-IBM has
announced that Nevada's Clark
County Family Services Department is using IBM
business analytics software to improve the delivery of social services and
ensure compliance with new state regulations.
In
an interview with eWEEK, Eboni Washington, a supervisor in the IT department
who oversees the business intelligence management and performance management
initiatives for the Clark County Family Services Department, said IBM
has helped Clark County
generate more than $7 million in new revenue in less than 18 months.
Clark
County is the 15th-largest county
in the United States
and provides regional family and social services to more than 2 million
residents. The Family Services Department is the local public agency whose role
is to help keep children safe, as required by the Federal Adoption and Safe
Families Act. The department runs numerous services-from child protective
services to foster care services to adoption services-all of which require a
large amount of data input and access.
IBM
analytics has streamlined data access and reporting processes for the Clark
County Department of Family Services and helped the department closely monitor
case worker compliance with state policies and legislation more easily.
Previously, keeping quality of services on pace with the population growth in Nevada
was a significant challenge for Clark County, Washington
said. The spreadsheet-based data collection process in place was time-consuming
and put a heavy burden on employees. With the added requirements of needing to
integrate with a statewide automated child welfare system and benchmark new
services, the department needed a solution that would make reporting easier,
help the department comply with new regulations and measure business
performance.
Lori
Higdon, a business analyst with the department, said Clark
County contracted with IBM
and PerformanceG2, an IBM Business Partner,
to eliminate multiple spreadsheets and hand-counting of information-practices
that led to confusion and errors. The staff no longer needs to manually keep
track of all their case management system information and, instead, can devote
time to providing services to families and children.
It
used to take the programming staff 14 hours to build a report; it now takes
half the time with IBM analytics software.
With thousands of ad hoc and daily reports run annually, this adds up to an
enormous amount of time saved for employees.
"We
had to migrate from a customized application to a statewide system,"
Higdon said. She said they knew they would lose a lot of functionality in the
migration, "so we began to look for an analytics solution that would
integrate with the existing system."
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
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